Today is #WorldAIDSDay, a day when the world’s focus is on the fight against HIV/AIDS. There are already a number of medications on the market to help ease symptoms of HIV.According to the World Health Organization, since the HIV/AIDS epidemic began more than 30 years ago, over 70 million people have contracted HIV. No vaccine exists to […]

Pesticide use on commercially grown crops has increased dramatically even more than consumers have been led to believe. According to figures recently released by the Soil Association – the UK’s leading food and farming charity and organic certification body – show the number of chemicals on supermarket vegetables has increased up to 17 fold in the […] […]

Among the hundreds of emails and newsletters that come my way everyday, one quickly caught my attention. In it was an article that talked about companies that do animal testing, a topic I’ve been following for a while. Let me be blunt. I despise that companies do horrendously painful and inhumane testing on defenseless, innocent animals. And […]

Many of you know I was a long time resident of Northern California, a place of beauty and many natural wonders that still holds a special place in my heart. The following is an excerpt from an article I wrote that was recently published online about one of these remarkable public places and the trials and […]

Contrary to assurances by fish farming concerns, thousands of farmed Atlantic salmon have escaped into the Pacific Ocean. They escaped from a damaged net pen at a Cooke Aquaculture fish farm off Cypress Island in Washington’s Puget Sound on Saturday, This has sparked fears that the farm-raised fish could threaten wild Pacific salmon. According to the Washing […]

So they put it to the test: They found coal and oil and natural gas are artificially cheap because they impose health and financial and environmental costs that all of us pay for — above and beyond the price. Whether we know it or not.

Whether we like it or not.

Sounds kind of like a subsidy, doesn’t it? It’s exactly like a subsidy.

Apples to apples? Solar and wind are often less expensive than coal and oil.

The Academy estimates that coal and oil drain $130 billion in hidden costs out of our economy. Coal is subsidized to the tune of 3 to 13 cents per kilowatt hour of energy – about 25 to 100 percent of what you pay for power.

And right before a campaign to reduce support for alternative energy which some say requires subsidies and is more expensive than fossil fuels.

People like Republican functionary Christopher Horner, whose new book proclaims that renewable energy will “bankrupt” this country and is a “declaration of war against America’s most reliable sources of energy—coal, oil, and natural gas.”

Or the usually reliable Wall Street Journal editorial writer Stephen Moore, who says renewable energy such as wind and solar is a plot between Big Government and Big Labor.

Before I became a card carrying member of this conspiracy and the CEO of a solar energy company, I studied for an MBA at the University of Chicago. There I was lucky enough, on many occasions, to meet the inspiration for many solar skeptics – America’s greatest economist Milton Friedman.

More than just a libertarian icon, Friedman just wanted to know what things cost. Not their price, their cost.

You do not need a Nobel Prize to see the freshman mistake of those who say wind and solar are too expensive to compete with coal and oil: They confuse price with cost.

But still we hear that coal and oil and natural gas are cheaper. Which is like the guy who throws garbage over his neighbor’s fence, then brags about free trash disposal. But really, someone else is paying for it.

The Academy said it was too complicated to estimate the largest hidden cost of energy — the price we pay in sending our best and bravest into harm’s way to guarantee our supply of foreign oil.

You want to put a price tag on that? Go ahead. Just make sure the number starts with a T. And if you throw your garbage over the fence, count that too.